12. James

12

JAMES

I touched the veil on my face for the tenth time since escaping from the palace. The dark shade of the fabric felt foreign against my skin, a constant reminder of my disguise. I was so used to wearing gold that anything else seemed wrong.

Stop it. You're going to give yourself away.

I was; I knew it. With effort, I lowered my hand to my side and kept walking toward the Promenade, trying to blend in with the flow of people around me.

Every step felt like I was moving through water. The air was... foggy out here. Thick. I hadn't realized before how effective the palace was at cleaning the air within its walls. Was this how it always felt to people who lived in greater Londabad? This faint burning in the lungs, the sense that my eyes were on the verge of tearing up?

And they're the lucky ones! People outside the great cities, like Londabad and Washington-York, didn't have the air scrubbers or rad-eaters that held back the worst of the radiation sickness and particulate matter. People living outside the cities lived short, miserable lives of bare subsistence.

At least, that was what Jeffry said.

Not that I wanted to think about my father's seneschal and cousin. Jeffry never had anything good to say about anything, including me. Oh, he might cloak his criticism in polite language for the sake of my parents, but I had been trained to interpret political language as well as any other prince.

"James, you really ought to pay better attention to your lessons," Jeffry's voice echoed in my head. "How will you understand the commerce of our great city if you can't even be bothered to listen to the merchant class?"

As though Jeffry had ever listened to anyone in the merchant class—they sent petitions to the throne, which were supposed to be read over by his father, but which in reality were usually dismissed unseen.

"Don't you think your hair is getting a touch too long? Isn't that jacket a bit louche? Aren't you hungrier than that? You wouldn't want to disgrace your future wife with a poor figure, would you?"

I wanted nothing more than to disgrace my "future wife," partially because Lavanya was Jeffry's daughter but mostly because she was a vicious, petty, lazy lump of a human who never spoke to me without a sneer on her face. As soon as our engagement was announced last year, she'd begun to comport herself as though she were empress already, ordering servants about and reprogramming the palace's bots to abandon their duties and tend to her every whim whenever she called.

There was only one criticism of me that I agreed with. "You're so unworldly, so sheltered. You don't know what life is really like out there. Let others take the lead, dear boy. You're a figurehead like your father, the heart of Londabad—but not the head."

Fuck that .

Talking to my parents about it had gotten me nowhere, although my mother had been sympathetic. I had listened to her stories of living in greater Londabad for years—she had been an actress in the city's most famous theater troupe before catching my father's eye. Their union was tempestuous, but it was generally thought of as a compelling love story. When she spoke about the lights, the color of the sky, and the masses of people swarming the night markets along the riverside, well, I knew I had to go, and soon, before marriage tied me down even more tightly to the palace.

Which left me here, plucking at my servant's veil and desperately hoping that no one would recognize me. I'd done well enough with the costume, I thought, and I'd shielded my royal identification biomarker so that it couldn't be read.

Would that be enough?

I could only hope.

Not for the first time since setting out, I wished I'd been able to bring my bodyguard bot along. Ravana was a top-of-the-line, tiger-faced guardian model who'd taken care of me since I was a small child. It had hurt to use the emergency deactivation mode against him, but I hadn't had a choice. Ravana would be too noticeable and advanced for a simple servant.

The noise was picking up now, and the lights of the Promenade shone brightly over the rooftops. These houses were so quaint, two or three stories packed tightly together, all made from ancient building materials reinforced over the years with stellocrete. It made for a charming patchwork effect, and each of the doors was painted a different color, enough that I could look along a row of them and see an entire rainbow.

It was quite lovely.

I stepped into the small square at the end of the street, and my eyes widened. Across the massive thoroughfare in front of me, all ten lanes of traffic bustling with scooters, e-cars and the occasional levitation device, were the bright lights of the Riverside Promenade. It extended for ten long blocks along the Londabad River, and each store promised a wealth of new delights. I grinned under my veil. I was eager to see what they had to offer.

Now, if I could just figure out how to cross this street first...

I watched as people around me seemed to navigate the chaos of the traffic effortlessly. A group of young women adorned with glowing tattoos giggled as they stepped onto a hovering platform that whisked them across the street. An older man with cybernetic legs simply leaped over three lanes of traffic at a time.

"First time out, eh?" a gravelly voice said beside me. I turned to see a wizened old woman, her face a map of wrinkles, smiling up at me.

"Is it that obvious?" I asked.

She cackled. "Only to those who know what to look for, dearie. Here, let me help you." She took my arm in a surprisingly firm grip and led me to what looked like an ordinary crosswalk. "Just step on the pad there and think about where you want to go."

I did as she instructed and suddenly felt a tingling sensation throughout my body. Before I could react, I was being pulled forward as if by an invisible force. In a blink, I found myself on the other side of the street, my heart racing with exhilaration.

"Thank you!" I called back to the old woman, but she had already disappeared into the crowd.

I turned to face the Promenade, my senses overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells. Holographic advertisements floated in the air, promising everything from instant youth to interplanetary virtual vacations. Street vendors called out their wares in a cacophony of languages, selling every imaginable delicacy, like traditional samosas made with synthetic meat grown in labs.

As I took my first steps onto the Promenade, I felt a rush of excitement. This was it. This was the real Londabad, the city I had wanted to explore for so long.